Importing Authorities

You may create a queue to better track this import project. If you do not create a new queue, it will automatically put your records into a default queue named -.

Don’t set a value for Holdings Import Profile, because this doesn’t apply to authority records.

Select a file of authority data and put it in the File to Upload field.

Make sure all the settings are correct, then press Upload.

The screen displays "Uploading… Processing…" to show that the records
are being transferred to the server, then displays a progress bar to show
the actual import progress. When the staff client displays the progress
bar, you can disconnect your staff client safely. Very large batches of
records might time out at this stage.

Evergreen will automatically assign a thesaurus based on the Subj fixed field, which is character 11 in the 008 field.

Evergreen will also try to determine who edited the record (based on the MARC 905u field or the user performing the import) and set the edit date, which you can view
when you examine the record in the future.

Once the import is finished, the staff client displays the results of
the import process. You can manually display the import progress by
selecting the Inspect Queue tab of the MARC Batch Import/Export
interface and selecting the queue name. By default, the staff client does
not display records that were imported successfully; it only shows records
that conflicted with existing entries in the database. The screen shows
the overall status of the import process in the top right-hand corner,
with the Total and Imported number of records for the queue.

Tip

If you are importing authorities from an external vendor and want to track this, you may wish to set a unique Record Source. This source will be visible in the MARC
Editor and in the 901$s field of the imported authority records.

Setting up Authority Record Match Sets

Click Cataloging → MARC Batch Import/Export.

Click Record Match Sets.

If you have sufficient privileges, you will be able to click on the New Match Set. If you are unable to do so, check that you have the ADMIN_IMPORT_MATCH_SET permission.

Give your new set a descriptive name, an owning library, and a match set type of authority.

Click on the blue hyperlinked name of the match set you just created to add criteria.

You can match against MARC tag/subfield entries or against a record’s normalized heading.

Note

Evergreen’s database stores normalized authority headings in a format that includes the thesaurus. This way, record match sets will not match terms from other thesauri, even if the term is very similar.

Tip

Evergreen’s internal identifier is in the 901c field. If you have previously exported authority record — perhaps for an external vendor to do authority cleanup work — and you want to import them back into your catalog, you may wish to include the 901c field in your match set.